"He is the very one, among us all, who has the weightiest reason: the recollection of an irreconcilable affront, for it was a personal one. You know the Czar. You know that, as a man, no one is his enemy. Even Jakuskin merely hates in him the Czar, not the man. Duke Ghedimin is the sole one who stands opposed to him, as man to man. The Czar was married very young, to a delicate wife; his children died early. He grew cold towards his wife, and sought compensation in a new passion. The only daughter of one of our first families, renowned far and wide for her great beauty, was willing to console him. The illicit connection had consequences--a daughter. The affair was kept strictly secret. The young duchess journeyed to Italy as an unmarried girl, and returned from there the same. Soon after she married Duke Ghedimin. Meanwhile a young girl was growing up in Italy who went by the name of Princess Sophie Narishkin, and who, in her fourteenth year, was brought to St. Petersburg. It was her father, not her mother, who brought her here. The girl resides in a house surrounded by a garden in the outskirts of the capital, where her father visits her constantly, her mother never. The father worships the child, who, moreover, is terribly delicate. The mother simply hates her. Her father is the Czar, her mother, Princess Ghedimin. Now do you see what brings Prince Ghedimin among us?" "Yes, yes. But does he know the secret of the girl's birth?" "Know it? We all do." "Still, no reason why the husband should. Think a moment. What human being is there who could go to a man like Prince Ghedimin and breathe to him such a foul statement about his own wife? At the least whisper of such a slander an inferior would receive the knout, an equal be shot. A shopkeeper may denounce his wife; no gentleman does such a thing. Who could have made this known to Ghedimin?" "Who other than his sweetheart! Is not Zeneida Prince Ghedimin's sweetheart, and has she not a thousand reasons to enlighten him upon his wife's shame?" "Do not believe a word of it! She has not done it. You do not know Fräulein Zeneida; I do. First of all, I do not believe she is Ghedimin's sweetheart; or, if she love him, it is with a real love, not that of a _Ninon de l'Enclos_. But my belief is that she is in love with some one else; and I believe, moreover, that she controls that love. She is a woman capable of defying the scorn of the whole world, but not of doing anything to merit her own self-contempt. And for a woman who loves a man to denounce his own wife to him is a piece of vileness only fit for the lowest of the low. You do not know with whom you have to deal. Zeneida is playing some far-seeing game with you. You are mere chessmen in her hands; one may be a castle, another a bishop, the third a knight. Possibly Ghedimin may be your king of chess, but she is not the queen. She is playing the game." "And you have confidence enough in her to consent to this?"